Thoughts on Torah, working, living in Israel and how they go together.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

I wouldn't hire Charedi women either

The Mishpacha newspaper had a long article this past Tuesday on the problems that Charedi women have in finding good paying jobs. IMHO, they downplayed the major reasons Charedi women have problems:

I. Pregnancy

Charedi women are almost always pregnant. If you hire a 23 year old Charedi women she probably has 1 child already and is pregnant with another. Over the next 15 years she will probably have a baby every 18 months to 2 years. This raises a number of serious issues for any employer:

Maternity leave - Every 18 months to 2 years the woman will take off at least 3 months, the employer has to figure out how to replace her for those 3 months, it is not simple. If you have a number of Charedi women, the odds are that at any given time at least one will be out on maternity leave.

In Israel it is practically impossible to fire a pregnant women. I saw this happen more then once where I work (a major American company with tens of thousands of employees around the world). Management decided to discontinue a product that was not selling and therefore laid off the entire team, directors, manager, programmers etc. Everyone except for the one woman who was 5 months pregnant. The company paid her not to come to work for the duration of her pregnancy she then took her 3 months maternity leave and then they paid her another 3 months until they could fire her. While no one hires employees with the intention of firing them, the ability to fire workers is important. Charedi women are very hard to fire because they are generally either pregnant or just had a baby much of the time.

Pregnancy itself - Being pregnant is not easy (each stage has it's challenges) and there is no question that for at least some women it will affect their productivity

II. Large Families

Charedi women generally have large families and large families make it harder to work for a number of reasons:

If you have 5, 6,7 or more kids, someone is always sick and someone needs to stay home and take care of them.

Someone needs to watch the kids during school vacations

School ends late afternoon, someone needs to watch the kids until teh mother gets home for work, or she needs to leave work early.

Taking care of a large family is exhausting and a full time job.

Travel is very difficult if not impossible.

III. It's a job not a career

Charedi women are brought up that work is a necessary evil to support their husband while learning and that they should not be career women. This means that they are generally not looking to get ahead etc. and will do their jobs but nothing more. It makes for good low level workers but does not provide much path for advancement.

IV.Cultural Issues

Charedi women want to work in an all female Charedi environment. What that means is that they have nowhere to advance and are severely limited in what and where they can work. If a Charedi women shows great promise it is very hard to promote here because she will then have to work with men, chilonim, and non-Jews. These days the workplace is all about teamwork. If you have nothing in common and can't relate to your co-workers it is a problem.

V. Education

Charedi woman may be well educated in the Beis Yaakov's but they generally don't have real academic degrees and in the secular world that is what counts. In all of the hi tech companies that I have worked for in Israel, they can't even get in the door because the minimum requirement is a degree from a University. Without a University degree they are limited to lower paying jobs.

In short, IMHO Charedi women have a hard time finding good paying jobs not because of discrimination but because of legitimate business and financial reasons. If I was running a business/managing a group, I would have a very hard time justifying hiring a Charedi woman because of all the issues mentioned above.

6 comments:

I work for a local company (local to me, anyway), and they employ mostly Charedi women as web designers and programmers. Granted, the pay isn't all that great, but it's an outsourcing outfit, so naturally they don't pay any of their employees all that much. Still, the women don't seem to have a problem working with men or Chilonim, whether men or women.

Hiring Charedi women can work, but you have to make the workplace friendly for them. None of the male programmers sit in the same row as any of the women, for example.

regarding the pregnancy leave: this is where the israeli feminist would go nuts and she'd have a point. where someone to write a blog about how he wouldn't hire an applicant who does miluim, and especially an officer even more, we'd all jump down his throat. but miluim is a national need, security, a value! so is having children.

Some women are more likely to have repeated pregnancies, and some aren't. I'm not in Israel and I don't know the likelihood that a man will have to go to milium. Do most men go, or only a small percentage?

If YOU wouldn't hire people from a certain group don't complain when it's members choose not to work.

Many years ago I worked for a MO accounting firm.The owner was a typical MO blogger (in the pre blog days)obsessed with accusing Chasidim for being dishonest etc.(and other forms of Sinas Chinom)One day a Chasidser guy from Williamsburg came for a job.That person received in the top half of a percent on the CPA exams refused to hire him explicitly saying I can't send someone with curly peyos to clients.He hired a much less qualified person from a different (non-Jewish unpopular) ethnic minority group instead.But yet he still complains why don't Chasidim go to college and why do they resort to welfare...

If YOU wouldn't hire people from a certain group don't complain when it's members choose not to work.

Many years ago I worked for a MO accounting firm.The owner was a typical MO blogger (in the pre blog days)obsessed with accusing Chasidim for being dishonest etc.(and other forms of Sinas Chinom)One day a Chasidser guy from Williamsburg came for a job interview.That person received in the top half of a percent on the CPA exams in NYS.My boss refused to hire him explicitly saying I can't send someone with curly peyos to clients.He hired a much less qualified person from a different (non-Jewish unpopular) ethnic minority group instead.But yet he still complains why don't Chasidim go to college and why do they resort to welfare...